Category: International

I attended my second Morris Hayes concert featuring new songs for a global documentary called the World Symphony for Peace. It was held on February 10th, 2018 at a private residence in Chanhassen Minnesota. It was also streamed live on Facebook to attendees tuning in around the world.

The team is currently traveling around the globe composing new songs through collaborations with global artists. The documentary follows Morris Hayes, keyboardist for Prince, on his quest to promote world peace through collaboration and the bridge of music. It is also an amazing story of responding to the loss of Prince by this tight-knit group of collaborators to continue spreading the vision of peace through music.

The event followed a similar format to the debut show I attended last winter. That write-up and images can be seen here: Opening show

This event also featured new songs that combined a string quartet that performed live arrangement with Morris Hayes on the keyboard playing to images and clips filmed for the documentary. The format varied between storytelling of the journies and with songs that were created in those locations.

It has been a fantastic opportunity to meet the people involved with this initiative and to be able to catch several live performances as the group travels to see the progress in both the music and the message. This journey is far from over, so I encourage people to get engaged and support this initiative.

I attended the Finish Ambassador’s presentation at the Gutherie Theatre that was hosted by several of the Euro-American Minnesota Chamber organizations and the Minnesota Trade department. The event marked a 100-year celebration of Finland’s independence. Ms. Kirsti Kauppi, the Finish Ambassador talked about Finland’s history and their strong capabilities in innovation. There are many similarities between Minnesota and Finland and many reasons to explore collaboration and trade.

Apple has enjoyed access to the Chinese market in where other major use companies like Facebook and Google have been blocked. Now China is taking a closer look at how Apple is competing within its market. Developers have enjoyed building local apps for the Chinese markets. Now threats are coming from multiple sides. A law firm representing several dozen developers have asked the Chinese government to look to see if Apple is violating and anti-trust laws or regulatory pricing in the app store. Large internet giant company, Tencent Holdings, has also had public friction with Apple. Local device manufacture’s devices are scavenging market share as Apple has struggled to meet the demand from waiting consumers for new iPhones. This increased scrutiny has caused Apple to continue to shift its business model towards services vs. a primary focus on devices alone. If the Chinese government intervenes with new regulation or penalties to Apple it could set a new president for US companies to compete in China’s markets.

I attended the 2017 Destination Medical Center Real Estate and Investment Summit in Rochester MN. It was a full day event being hosted at the Mayo Civic Center located on the downtown waterfront of the Zumbro river. The day would begin with guided walking tours of the new development areas in downtown as well as visit familiar sites around the Mayo buildings and cultural centers of downtown. This included the Heart of the City, Discovery Square, Central Station, St. Mary’s Place, and the Downtown Waterfront areas of planned development. The UMR/recreation area was also mentioned on the tour.

Over twenty speakers would take the stage throughout the day to talk about different aspects of the development activities in Rochester. The speaker roster included:

Mayor Brede, City of Rochester

Doug Holtan, Mayo Clinic

Rob Miller, Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce

Jon Buggy, RSP Architects

David Vigliotta, Seventhwave

Joe Weis, Weis Builders

Jamie Sundsbak, Collider

Chris Puchalla, Iron Point Partners

Jeanine Gangeness, Winona State University

Nick Pompeian, Realty Growth Incorporated

Kent Roers, Roers Investments

Tom Leimer, Knutson Construction

Lisa Clarke, Destination Medical Center, Economic Development Agency

Richard Freese, City of Rochester

Patrick Seeb, Destination Medical Center, Economic Development Agency

Mac Hamilton, Hamilton Realty Inc

Bob Lux, Alatus LLC

Rick Fenske, Weis Builder

Nate Stencil, Stencil Group

There where many diverse stories of investment, development, and innovations that spanned industry, community, and transportation. They investments around infrastructure are very future forward in terms of next generation solutions. The city is also attracting a fair amount of international investment.

The day concluded with a large networking session and then the final ribbon-cutting ceremony of the new expansion of the Mayo Civic Center. The amount of energy, interest, investment, and mindshare that the community shares was both visible and felt in all the interactions. The depth and breadth of the vision into the future also sets a high bar for other city planners. My steps involve a number of follow-on meetings in Rochester that will explore the best practices around building economic engines around innovation, education, and exchange that can amplify the great progress already underway.

The focus of the new organization is the culmination of the past tens years of studying corporate innovation centers and the past four years looking at the development of regional innovation ecosystems across cities around the world. The work is ongoing documenting frameworks, patterns, and best practices that are being used. Decision support trees that highlight interdependencies and trade-off between approach options. While this information has resulted in methodologies for corporations and regions to incrementally develop new capabilities in the innovation realm, the internal focus has been on the collection of data and development of several book series that will explore in depth the approaches, trends, and nuances that have shaped the direction of approaches due to varying competitive conditions around the world.